Samsung’s 990 EVO SSD Features Unique PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 5.0 x2 Protocol Support

Samsung’s 990 EVO SSD Features Unique PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 5.0 x2 Protocol Support

Samsung’s latest consumer SSD in the form of 990 EVO is nothing too out of the ordinary – the company has yet to really push the limits of PCIe 5.0’s available bandwidth. However, despite the mainstream SSD having relatively modest performance figures that don’t even saturate PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth, it features a unique design that allows it to run under either PCIe 4.0 x4 mode or PCIe 5.0 x2 mode.

Here are the basic numbers of the drive – for starters, the sequential read/write performance of the 990 EVO is rated up to 5,000MB/s and 4,200MB/s, with random I/O throughput rated up to 700K and 800K respectively. It’s also a DRAM-less drive, meaning it relies on HMB (Host Memory Buffer) – a technique that utilizes the host system’s extra RAM capacity to act like onboard SSD DRAMs to accelerate file transfers while reducing the material cost of the drive.

So, what’s the deal with the explicit support for narrower PCIe 5.0 x2 standard, despite that virtually no SSD slots today use this signaling configuration? Samsung wasn’t particularly clear in this regard, only stating that it was “created to meet current computing needs and in anticipation of future requirements.” We’re not sure if this may point to systems in the future opting for narrower x2 lanes for M.2 SSD connections, and so far no signs are pointing to such.

While the drive is currently yet to be released in Malaysia, it’s available in some regions in both 1TB and 2TB variants, each costing $124.99 and $209.99 respectively.

Pokdepinion: Oddly enough, this is Samsung’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD. They’re taking their sweet time for the full-fledged model, I suppose.